We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring "The Prosecution of Don Siegelman."
It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York. We are working with them right now to see if we can re-broadcast the segment.
Please be patient with us during this time. We are doing our best to correct the problem.
On racism: "Any time something bad happens to a black person because of racism, I feel it in my soul. I really do. You take the Abner Louima case. That let me know one thing: If some white guys wanted to stick a plunger up a black guy's butt, and I'm the black guy who happened to be around, I'd have a plunger up my butt."
On Saddam Hussein: "I think he's still alive. . . . Look at Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - they used to both work for the United States and now they're enemies. That's part of the hypocrisy that goes on here."
On the flak celebrities get for their anti-war beliefs: "That's part of the hypocrisy that goes on when you're in the limelight - if you say something, you're anti-American or unpatriotic or too liberal. We're all free to say what we want to, but if you ever forget your place, we'll put you back in your place."
On politics: "Politics is too corrupt," Barkley said. "You know how you can tell politics is corrupt? President Bush is going to raise $250 million for a job that pays $400,000. Now tell me there isn't something wrong there?"
On his priority in life: "My No. 1 priority is to help poor people. In this country, 90% of the money is controlled by 10% of the people, and that's not right."
Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.
“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”
Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among other members of Congress, disclosed his decision in an interview in which he said that as a superdelegate he could “never, ever do anything to reverse the action” of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama.
Alberto Gonzales may be out, but the country is still waiting for a full accounting of how he and his White House patrons cynically politicized the Justice Department. Congress is rightly asking questions about the actions of yet another United States attorney: New Jersey’s Christopher J. Christie. The House also needs to stop procrastinating and vote to hold witnesses in contempt for refusing to testify in the wider scandal.
[snip]
Some of the people who likely know the most about the role politics has played in the Bush Justice Department have defied Congressional subpoenas to testify. Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, contend that they are protected from testifying by executive privilege. That is not enough. They have a legal obligation to appear before Congress and plead that privilege to specific questions.
The House Judiciary Committee voted in July to hold Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers in contempt. The House’s Democratic leadership has been trying to figure out the pros and cons ever since. The public needs to hear the testimony of these officials (along with Karl Rove, who is also refusing to appear), and the full House should vote as quickly as possible to hold them in contempt.
The stakes are high. There are people in jail today, including a former governor of Alabama, who have raised credible charges that they were put there for political reasons. Congress’s constitutionally guaranteed powers are also at risk. If Congress fails to enforce its own subpoenas, it would effectively be ceding its subpoena power. It would also be giving its tacit consent to the dangerous idea of an imperial president — above the law and beyond the reach of checks and balances.
The founders did not want that when they wrote the Constitution, and the voters who elected this Congress do not want it today.
Bob Riley has a dilemma. He has one major objective to achieve to conclude his term as governor of Alabama, and that is to put the state’s legislature in Republican hands. And he has two key allies in this struggle, determined to facilitate his struggle. The first are two key Newhouse newspapers, the Mobile Press-Register and the Birmingham News. The publishers of both are fully committed to the success of his campaign for a Republican legislature. The second is Alice Martin, the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham who figures high on the list of what Kyle Sampson called the “loyal Bushies” and who has a well-documented penchant for political prosecutions and a well-articulated desire for elected office or a judgeship.
Riley and his team reason, if they can take out this group, they will accomplish their objective of crafting a new G.O.P. legislature. Hence the hew and cry of “double dipping” pursued in perfect concert between Riley, the Birmingham News and Alice Martin. Of course, legislators who teach in universities and 4-year colleges arguably face the same issues. And indeed, so do doctors, lawyers, accountants, insurance men–professionals who may regularly sell their services to the state–or even car dealers, like Bob Riley. Why aren’t we discussing them as well? There’s a simple answer to that undeniably logical question: run the numbers and look at the party affiliations of those involved. You’ll see that it wouldn’t serve the objective of creating a Republican legislature to push the question so far. So two-year colleges is just fine, thank you.
State Rep. Sue Schmitz faces criminal charges in connection with a paycheck she collected for more than three years in Alabama’s two-year college system. State Rep. Sue Schmitz’s arrest in the two-year college scandal may or may not end in a criminal conviction. But even at this early stage in the process, Schmitz’s legal problems should serve as notice to current and future members of the Legislature: A legislative seat is not a license to steal.
Sue Schmitz is a 63-year-old retired social studies teacher. She was dragged from her home before the break of dawn. Her husband was forced to stand outside shirtless in the cold while a team of federal agents drags this woman, a respected member of the community, from her bathroom, tearing her flesh in the process so that she left her home dripping blood. All of this was done as part of a conscious attempt to humiliate and shame her, steps directed by Alice Martin. And steps in which the News now joins cause.
What are the charges against her? That she did not adequately perform on a contract she had with a non-governmental organization to support a civics education project.
[snip]
This woman is viewed as a pillar of her community, is the recipient of a long list of awards and distinctions for her selfless and outstanding teaching work. You won’t read any of that in the News, either. And they don’t tell you that this woman, whom they would have you believe is a parasite and a leach, in fact worked her heart out on programs for disadvantaged kids for no compensation whatsoever over a period of many years.
The morning calm in the small Alabama town of Toney, located near Huntsville, was broken at 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning. A team of five FBI agents, accompanied by a prison matron, pounded on the door. When the man of the house answered, he was forced into the yard, shirtless in the early morning cold. The team had come for his wife, Sue Schmitz. She was dragged out of her bathroom, where she was taking a shower, handcuffed, breaking her flesh and scraping her wrists, and hustled off to prison.
Who was this threat to the community? Sue Schmitz is a diminutive, 63-year-old retired social studies teacher who has lived in the town for 38 years, roughly 20 of them as a civics teacher. She is loved in the community and among her students is legendary for her passion for civics and her outreach to the disadvantaged. The dream of her life was to let the fire of civic spirit catch on in communities and among families on the margin of society, where the danger of drug abuse and criminality are the highest. She dedicated her life to it. She launched a program called “We the People,” designed to build civic spirit and interest in participatory democracy among school children. And Sue Schmitz’s advocacy of civic engagement led directly to her conflict with U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, who considers it to be criminal. But one other fact figures directly in this drama. Schmitz is a Democratic member of the state legislature.
And today we see the typical pincer movement involving the Alabama G.O.P. election campaign’s third arm, the U.S. Attorney’s office. Specifically, Alice Martin, the sometime U.S. Attorney, sometime G.O.P. candidate for elective office. Martin fully understands the benefit to the party and its election efforts of criminal prosecutions being commenced that target elected Democrats, are geared carefully to the election cycle, and are hyped extensively to the party media apparatus. And yesterday, as Sue Schmitz was dramatically dragged from her home in Toney, Alice Martin went before the press with an announcement which will feature prominently in Republican campaign literature for the coming years. She announced an indictment that Blackledge signaled, with his usual perfect clairvoyance in all things prosecutorial, was in the works months back.
The indictment claims Schmitz made as much as $53,403 annually as a program coordinator despite rarely showing up and doing virtually nothing for the money.
Schmitz was charged with mail fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, and fraud involving a program receiving federal funds, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000.
Schmitz is scheduled to enter a plea during a hearing set for Feb. 11 in Huntsville. She was the latest in a string of state officials swept up in a joint federal-state investigation of the Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education.
Legislatively, Schmitz is best known for introducing a bill to give Alabama a new official insect by replacing the monarch butterfly with the queen honey bee. The measure passed the House but died on the final days of the 2005 session.
U.S. Attorney Martin seems to have a problem with the truth. She’s currently under investigation for giving perjured testimony in connection with an employment litigation. I lay out the details of the accusations against her, which are quite compelling, here. However, Martin serves at the pleasure of the president, and, as comedian Jon Stewart would say, it clearly pleasures him for her to continue to serve. And it pleasures Karl Rove and the G.O.P. state organizers even more.
The legislator worked for a prevention program for troubled youth based at the college from January 2003 until October 2008. During at least part of that time, she also sat on the House Education Appropriations Committee.
That committee wields considerable power over the budget of her employer, although it isn't clear at this point to what extent, if any, she was active in deciding the school's budget.
As for the claim that the prosecutor could have tipped the press if she wanted to humiliate Schmitz, at least one other reason for not doing so seems as likely. Pictures of the tiny woman in handcuffs might have generated sympathy for Schmitz and criticism of Martin.
"I can't see where she has committed any crime," Watson said Friday.
Ironically, Schmitz was arrested on the same day she planned to go to Montgomery with a group of high school students to participate in the government study program "We the People."
After signing her bond, she traveled to Montgomery to join her students. When she got there, Schmitz and the students definitely had something to talk about.
I haven't seen the full indictment, and I look forward to checking it out so I can better understand what could make a 63-year-old retired social-studies teacher a federal criminal. But according to a quote from Martin in one news report, the indictment is based partly on the fact that Schmitz allegedly "generated virtually no work product."
Don't know about you, but I know all kinds of people who generate virtually no work product. They are called managers. If we are going to indict all of them, we'd better start a serious program to build more courthouses and prisons.
